According to the world health organization (WHO), more than 11 millions people are diagnosed with cancer every year in the world and more than 7 millions people die from cancer every year. Conventional therapies for cancer involve the administration of anti-tumor drugs such as thymidylate synthase inhibitors (e.g., 5-fluorouracil), nucleoside analogs, non-steroidal and steroidal aromatase inhibitors, taxanes and topoisomerase-I inhibitors. The best outcome expected from present day chemotherapy is to kill malignant cells. A clinically significant problem with this approach is that the doses of current chemotherapeutic drugs required for this outcome are often toxic to non-cancerous cells. It would be beneficial to identify a chemotherapeutic drug that would render cancerous or malignant cells harmless to subjects while significantly decreasing the side effects associate with current chemotherapeutic drugs.
Accordingly, the need exists to identify or synthesize new chemotherapeutic agents that would effectively treat cell proliferative disorders while decreasing the side effects associated with current chemotherapeutic drugs.